During the process of hiring a replacement for offensive coordinator Danny Langsdorf, Riley figured he could go one of two ways.

Why? I can think of a handful of other arrangements. I think a better sentence would be “Given Riley’s conservative temperament, he narrowed the possibilities down to two choices that were in his comfort zone.”

Through the process, Riley had a list of 50 candidates.

Obviously that means there were more than the two choices mentioned above.

Riley also considered filling the O-coordinator job from within the program.

“We’ve kind of been in-bred for a long time,” he says. “There is some good to that. I like the continuity. But ultimately, I decided to go out of the box to make this hire.

Hilarious he acknowledged the in-breeding, but if ever there was a time to promote from within, this was probably it. Brennen did seem like a logical choice, unless he just doesn’t have the aptitude for it…but it seems like he does, and those with connections to the program felt that way, too. Riley has this habit of making wrong decisions, then everyone criticizes him for it, and then he does something else just to appease the critics, but he doesn’t do it at the right time. For example, going for 4th downs in ridiculous scenarios just because an increasingly critical/vocal group called him conservative. Watch next year he starts using timeouts on 1st and 10 at the 20. *rolls eyes*

Overall, Riley says a lot of good things in the article. He wants to move forward, he doesn’t want in-breading, yada yada. It sounds like he’s reading AB. The thing is, we have heard him say this kind of stuff in the past yet it never gets implemented quite right. As Lou Reed said, “Between thought and expression lies a lifetime.”

As I read it, the 50 candidate thing doesn’t “Obviously” mean there were more than the two choices mentioned above. I don’t understand Eggers to say the two choices were Garrett vs. Himebauch but more a choice between two concepts. (Notwithstanding para 8)

The two choices to me were: 1) hiring a full time coach for TE’s leaving Riley to coach QB’s and act as OC (para 4 in the article). 2) hiring a coach for QB’s and using a GA for TE’s. This second choice wasn’t clearly stated by Eggers, so that is just how I read it, pretty much a default in view of the clearly stated choice in para 4.

It all boils down to where Riley wants to spend his time and, I suppose, how much time/energy he wants to devote to the job. Wonder earlier in his career if he’d shy away from handling OC and QB duties.

I like your “better sentence” , but that is the kind of straight talk we seldom hear.

Even so, why are those the only two concepts? What about this as a concept: hire an up and coming coach who can also recruit. That wasn’t even considered a choice/concept? How about hiring an OC who has dominated at the DII level, ala Chip Kelly? That wasn’t an option or choice? And to follow up, why wasn’t it a choice? Not aimed at you, but the media…why don’t they ask why those ‘concepts’, as you say, weren’t even considered?

This goes to show that Eggers produces about 75% of the novel mainstream content (not in terms of volume, but rather value). Canzano is another major contributor from time to time. I too thought as I read it near the end of the baseball series thread: “goodness, this reads like a critque you’d find in AB.com” I’m an agnostic on the recent coaching hire; that is, regard to Langsdorf’s replacement. If anything, I lean to the positivity of the “new blood” theory you see Riley evincing. The business about Danny calling the plays in the last two games is a classic “sheep-dip” operation; that is, throw the scent off so the wolves can’t find ’em. In short, a feel good cover story. Every instinct I have tells me Riley encourage Langsdorf to look elsewhere.

OT: just returned from the sunny climes and took in the first three games from Surprise. My principal take-away: when Jim Wilson speaks people should listen. Defense up the middle (ss and catcher) was a profound weakness in critical situations. Love watching Pat Casey work the dugout though. He shows more engagement in one game than Riley does a whole season. It’s a young team and now that the Wetzler distraction is coming to a close the team should be on a more even keel.

“What about this as a concept: hire an up and coming coach who can also recruit. That wasn’t even considered a choice/concept? How about hiring an OC who has dominated at the DII level, ala Chip Kelly? That wasn’t an option or choice? And to follow up, why wasn’t it a choice? Not aimed at you, but the media…” and the media could have pointed to UO example that has given fits to Riley/Banker.

The other angle to opportunity is was to hire somebody who has called plays – Riley’s hired an O coordinator who hasn’t called plays.

But that requires Riley allows Garret to critically and creatively challenge Riley and the scheme. It requires Riley give Garret some decision space and let him operate within it, even if he makes some mistakes. However, whenever Riley’s asked why he doesn’t do something different, he usually says something like “That’s not what we do.”

As to being less in-bred, I guess. But he’s listening to the same person who recommended Perry. Now I think Perry has worked out fine – at least CBs are playing the ball now – but why not mix it up more?

And speaking of inbreeding, I think Tavita Thompson and Kristick dilute the coaching talent pool. Maybe they understand the game better than their abilities would lead one to believe, and maybe they’re effective communicators and motivators. But I think they could have pulled better examples from the program.

The best I think we could hope is that Garret can diversify the plays, subsequent play calling, and convince assist Riley in effectively changing the pace of the game; not just go hurry up or no huddle, but do it strategically and execute. Garret talks about it being effective and important, we’ll see if his boss listens.

Interesting site. Normally I don’t respond to anonymous email. I will say something about this comment: “Riley has this habit of making wrong decisions, then everyone criticizes him for it, and then he does something else just to appease the critics…” Couldn’t be further from the truth. He makes the decision because he believes in it. You think he reads message boards or listen to fan opinion? He has a football program to run. He has 40 years in the business. He knows what he’s doing.
As for “follow-up questions,” what, you think i don’t ask follow-ups? Perhaps you don’t read me very often.
Kerry
—————

Kerry,

Maybe you do ask follow ups. But the Oregon media, in general, is soft on Riley. I know you and he are friends so this is probably touchy.
Regarding the article in question, to me a logical question would have been, “Mike, why wasn’t bringing in a known recruiter a third option?”, or “Mike, why wasn’t going to the DII level and hiring an up and coming guy an option?”. Maybe he has totally legit reasons for that, but nobody asks the questions. And fans who want those things are left speculating and getting frustrated with Riley.

————–

OK, fair enough. We covered a lot of ground in a half-hour. He’s a busy man. I have to pick my spots. He made it clear Garrett was the guy he considered the best candidate. I thought about asking who else besides Borges were among the candidates, but we moved on to something else and it slipped my mind. Thanks for the note. Kerry

I have yet to read the article, but it sounds like Riley talks about going outside the “family” or staying inbred… but his choices on the “outside” are two inbreds… one of which was hired….

Oh my good sky deity! hank you for not allowing any other sky deity to direct Riley to hire Al Borges.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

The mystery of the outside inbred Garrett hire is bad enough. Borges would have just been a disaster from a PR standpoint.

I will now go read the article to see if anything I’ve gleaned from this thread is accurate. I can say that this paragraph from oldbeav is more than a little disconcerting:

“It all boils down to where Riley wants to spend his time and, I suppose, how much time/energy he wants to devote to the job. Wonder earlier in his career if he’d shy away from handling OC and QB duties.”

Hello? Does he not now make more than he did whenever he supposedly devoted more time/energy than he does now? Are you supposing we’re paying more for less?

Quick thought while I read the article:
How the fuck is Al Borges even remotely intriguing as an OC candidate? Are we freebasing crushed prescription drugs before we evaluate what is and is not intriguing?

“We’ve kind of been in-bred for a long time,” he says. “There is some good to that. I like the continuity. But ultimately, I decided to go out of the box to make this hire.”

No, Mike… You did not go outside the “box.” Nor did you shake the inbred feel for this hire. You have projected great responsibility upon someone who has yet to prove he can handle such responsibility. And the only reason for such a choice is the inbreeding feel of the hire.

As a Beaver, I now must submit to you and Garrett and the next decade and hope that this is not a poor move.

On the bright side… Langsdorf could still be here not… umm… not calling plays.

“We can’t put in a new kitchen sink. We have a senior quarterback who has grown up in the system. We can’t change the language and make him re-learn stuff. We can’t step backward that way. What we want to do is make it better for the quarterback. That will be leaving a lot of terminology in place, leaving a lot of concepts.”

Okay… I just have to stop everything here for a reality check. First, football is not learning a new language. It’s not even learning complex addition after only knowing single digit addition for years when you change an offense.

It’s football. A football player learning a new lexicon for is job may be comparable to a normal person learning a new language. But get over that shit now. Learning a new lexicon within an industry is done seamlessly by millions of people every day. Maybe we should pay them gazillions for the not pedestrian jobs they do?

After saying that e prefers his OC calls plays:
“If he’s ready to do that, and it’s better for us, good. I’ll make a decision on what’s best for us.”

C’mon man! You’re hiring someone to do a job. You’re not hiring someone to maybe hopefully kinda do somewhat of a job… because your auntie said you had to let Johnnie do something or she would take your ball away. Thankfully this isn’t a job which “earns” hundreds of thousands of dollars and, thus, garners expectations comparable to such a salary.

But I will say this. Bernard seems to me to be someone suited to be an ambassador, and not in a political way. He can be one for a charity, a school, a country (political, but not so), or even for a sport. That he has to dumb his talents down to become a football coach is sad. But at least it pays better than the noble ways I speak of.

Yeah… a drink of Robitussin. The weekend caught up with me and laid me out with a cold. I haven’t had one in a couple years, so I’m not enjoying my condition at the moment. As such, my tolerance for coach speak less pointed than a pocket knife after a game of mumbly peg is rather short.

For my own sanity I have kind of given up on trying to figure out why OSU does what OSU does. I’m actually kind of glad about this years coaching changes. I think it is good that Riley brought in new blood. I’m also very glad to see other young guys that were some of our favorite players coming into the team. Moevao – Bernard – types were great player mainly because they had a great attitude and loved the game… I hope they can help focus this team to be winners and not Jekyll and Hyde.

I think the talent is in there to make some noise… I mean some of the best NFL combine peeps were OSU guys this year. Hopefully new blood will develop what we have into winners.

Unrelated, my OSU alumni 78 year old dad who can be Polyanna about OSU at times visited a week ago. He hates Bobby D. I almost fell off my chair because he actually got it. He said Bobby has to go before we move on to the next level. Pat Casey for A. D.!

She is just as snarky on twitter as ever. Invested some spare time looking at her twitter, now I’ll never get that back. Better to have split some kindling or even contemplated the ol’ navel, live n learn.

I like that article – a lot. Craig Bohl sounds like the polar opposite of MR except for a “pro style approach.” As for recruiting, “You’re going to get a great degree and play championship football — after that, there’s not a lot of time for anything else.” The scenery, he says, isn’t as important as what happens inside the stadium.

Dunno if Lindsay Schnell is asking better questions – or if Bohl is an easy interview or if she has better guidance at SI than the Oregonian but I thought this was well-written.

Lindsay has always been able to tell a warm, fuzzy, human interest story. She has always been just fine at reporting what a coach or institution has wanted to publicize, “the company line”, if you will.

Where she fell short, in my estimation, was in anything which approached “investigative” journalism. She always avoided asking the hard questions and excused that shortcoming by saying, “I can’t force the interviewee to give the answers the fans seem to want”. She was loath to ask a hard question and let the non-answer give the reader some insight.

I agree with you. When she was reporting for the Oregonian; I stopped reading her shluck. In this case, since Bohl hasn’t yet coached a game I’m not sure what hard questions she could ask. I thought it was informative; his staying to coach at NDSU for their last game – his thoughts on that; the number of recruits at Wyoming; the indoor facility. Perhaps it was the subject and the timing, but I enjoyed reading this particular article.

I agree that this article was well done. In fact, I think she may do very well at SI where she (it seems) will be able to stick to the kind of stories she does best and not be in the “beat reporter” role with a single team.
The scoops will go to folks like Aaron Fitt (I know, not at SI) and the general stuff can be done by Lindsay.
If you’ve read her tweets you know that she didn’t enjoy interacting with fans. She’ll likely avoid that nuisance if she is not assigned to a single team.